Al-Ankaboot (The Spider)

64. “And this life of the world is nothing but a sport and a play and verily the abode of the hereafter, is certainly the (real) life: did they but know!”

The Qur’anic word /lahw/ is used for the amusements which hinder man from the main aims and fundamental affairs. The Arabic term /la‘ib/ is doing something like play in which there is no particular aim.¹

The creation of the world has been done wisely and for a particular aim, while being mammonist and neglectful from the Hereafter is done foolishly.

In order that men can promote their thought higher than the horizon of this limited life, and that they open the doors of some vaster worlds to the scope of the vision of their intellect, in this verse the Holy Qur’an, through a short and very expressive sentence, compares the life of the present world with the eternal life in another world, where it says:

“And this life of the world is nothing but a sport and a play…”

There is not anything in this world save sport and play, while the life in another world is the real life. The above verse continues:

“…and verily the abode of the hereafter, is certainly the (real) life: did they but know!”

What an interesting and expressive meaning this Qur’anic phrase /la hiyal hayawan/ is! Because the Arabic word /lahw/ means ‘sport’ and anything that makes man busy to it and turns him away from the essential affairs of life, while the word /la‘ib/ (a play) is used for the acts that have a kind of imaginary order for an imaginary aim, (play).

In a ‘play’ someone plays as a king and another one as a minister, another one is the commander of the army, and some others play as a caravan or as a thief. But after their struggles and conflicts, we see that all of their deeds have been some imaginary acts.

The Qur’an implies that the life of this world is a kind of sport and play. In it, there are some people who pursue some imaginary things. After a few days they scatter and their bodies will be buried under the ground, and, then everything will be forgotten.

But the real life, which has no declension or destruction, will remain. There is neither pain, nor toleration, nor distress, nor fear, nor any trouble in the life of hereafter, but it is with the condition that man knows it and studies it carefully.

Those who love the life of this world and became happy and beguiled by its dazzling glare are like some children, though they have lived a long life.

However, it must be noted that, as some commentators and philologists believe, the Qur’anic word /haywan/ means ‘life/, It points to this fact that ‘the abode of hereafter’ is the abode of real life, as if life gushed from all of it and there were nothing in it but ‘life’.

It is evident that never the Qur’an intends to negate the Divine merits of this world by this meaning, but it intends to illustrate the value of this life comparing with that life by an explicit and clear comparison.

Moreover, it wants to warn man that he must not be as captive for these merits; he must be a commander upon them, and he must never exchange the noble values of his own self for them.